R4 Fast Preview
22 messages in this thread
" (Hopefully the new batch of 3d accelerator chips coming out will
hold some promise… IF Adesk decides to support the new cards)"
Yup! I don't forward them to management weekly, as Jonas suggests,
but monthly. As far as bug collecting for Vibrant drivers, that's
weekly.
The way something gets on the "wishlist" is that someone reports that
they have such-and-such a card and can't see it listed in the current
drivers. The more folks who have the card increases the likelihood
of Autodesk commissioning Vibrant to write those drivers.
Do you have a particular card in mind for the wishlist?
>>Do you have a particular card in mind for the wishlist?
The cards I was thinking about are not out yet. I'm hoping for direct
support for the new 3D rendering chips (the Glint, among others I've read
about, that are to be integrated into new graphics cards), so that we can enjoy
hardware assisted shaded previews of animations in near realtime. I'm sorry,
but the R4 previewer doesn't even come CLOSE to near realtime for animations
(even on a Pentium it's painfully slow – even in wireframe, I've found it
useless on all but the simplest geometry, and it has too many drawbacks to
appeal to me).
Hopefully, it won't be difficult for 3ds to put these new technologies
to good use.
David
That's a very popular item on most folks' wishlists, fyi.
– G
Gary,
I saw several OpenGL savvy 3D cards at Comdex this past week, some were only
prototypes, not all used standard hardware. It looks to me that this will be
the way to implement features like Fast Preview with any degree of usefulness.
With everything still in turmoil, I'm holding off on my Pentium purchase until
after NAB. Also, last week at the SGI authoring conference the Silicon Studio
people were explicit in pointing out that the only path to the PC platform for
the Keystone and Firewalker developement environments would be OpenGL chips on
graphics display or accelerator cards.
I hope that with R-5 Adesk is allowing you more manuevering room to to set the
core feature set. I get the distinct impression from reading between he lines
of the threads here that corporate took some creative control out of your hands
in order to ship a revenue generating product by an arbitrary timeline. There's
enough value packed in to R-4 so that no lasting harm is done. But it wasn't
all that long ago that you stole this market away from a sleeping and greedy
Crystal/GSL . There are able competitors out there just waiting for a mis-step
to exploit.
Bruce N. Goren
Actually, the reason why we were only involved with some of the technology
behind r4 is because we've been balls-to-the-wall on the next generation 3DS
for quite some time now. The folks at Autodesk were kind enough to take on
most of the R4 release-level work so we could concentrate on inventing the
future. I would've loved to have been as anally-compulsive about R4 as I was
about R1-3, but the future is pretty tough to invent, and our customers needed
inverse kinematics, scripting and the various bug-fixes and IPAS API
enhancements BADLY (hence, R4). So, I get to be as anal compulsive about R5 as
I can possibly be, which is even more than R1-3.
I can't ramble on about this any more without breaking my confidentiality
obligations. Sorry.
– G
>>I can't ramble on about this any more without breaking my confidentiality
obligations. Sorry.
I can't imagine how difficult it must be sitting around here listening
to the various complaints that roll by, and not being able to say a word to
anybody about it, even though you may be hard at work addressing those very
issues right now. You must have fun at Siggraph, when you finally get to show
off.
David
Well… since I'm someone who likes to surprise people, it's not as tough as
you'd imagine. It's more amusing than anything else to see how many folks
think that we don't have a clue. Siggraph's have always been a lot of fun for
me, and 1995 ain't gonna be an exception.
– G
<how many folks think that we don't have a clue> Gary, that's a good one. That
would be something like having dinner with and abstract math researcher, with a
specialty in chaos theory. Though I use fractal dev. platforms extensively, in
the development of maps, shapes, and animated interactive elements, starting to
argue with him would only reflect the fact that the appetizer was perhaps not
agreeing with me so well. On the other hand, if he was being funded for his
research, or his research was being utilized…. therein, we could engage in
quite a polemic. You see, my problem always comes back to "reality". So, with
"balls-to-the-wall, best wishes as you plow toward R5. Jeffrey
No problem my friend. Looking forward to a return to uncompromising perfection
under your steady hand in 3DS-TNG .
Bruce N. Goren
Engaged. <g>
– G
Um, regarding the actual subject… Fast Preview… I don't have the $700 until
maybe Feb, so could somebody please post/send a still of this, so I can just
have an idea of what it looks like?
– gruhn
Thanks David. Keep me / Autodesk informed with specifics as they come up.
I've got your GLint note filed.
Nik
<< The cards I was thinking about are not out yet. I'm hoping for direct
support for the new 3D rendering chips (the Glint, among others I've read
about, that are to be integrated into new graphics cards) >>
The GLiNT processor really looks like it has a lot of potential. It would be
really nice if the YG could somehow be involved in the development of a
graphics card that the GLiNT would be built in to. Maybe integrate the card
into the typically software-only "package", and market it as such.
BILL
I just noticed a flier from 3D labs (the Glint people) saying that they
have partnered with Adesk to "port and optimize Autodesk's 3D software to the
Glint…". Who knows if 3DS is included with that, but I'd like to think so.
David
<< partnered with Adesk to "port and optimize Autodesk's 3D software >>
Really ? It said *_3D_* software ? Was that the recent 2-sided card that went
out and featured the S3 announcment ?
BILL
It was a single page newsletter of sorts. Here is the sidebar in full,
"3Dlabs and the technology component division of Autodesk are
partnering to port and optimize Autodesk's 3D software to the Glint
family of graphics processors. The first result of this partnership
will be a no charge bundle of HDI with every Glint chip."
I would tend to think that Adesk's main interest would be with
their VR software, not necesarily 3DS.
Well does that mean that I'm going to have to buy yet ANOTHER VGA
accelerated board, or is this in addition to the 64 bit Matrox I
have? Because Matrox has hardware support for the OpenGL 3D library,
and I was hoping that IT would become the standard, just like it
became for SGI. Let me know…Alex.
>>Let me know…
I'm not the one to ask, as I don't know much at all about
these new cards, other than what I read in CGW and the like. All I do
know is that I hold high hopes for any promise of better realtime
interactivity when working with 3DS (as do the rest of us I'm sure).
RE: GLiNT…Hey, write a version of 3DS around it, drop the card in
the software package, charge more for those who want it. I think
that's the only way to get real performance out of something like
GLiNT. <ggg>
That strategy, of special version software and hardware accelerator
bundles, failed miserably for Cubicomp (I-860), GSL/Topas (I-860),
and to a lesser extent, Digital Arts (T-800). They had to charge
around ten grand just for the boards. An ADI driver, and/or port to
an OpenGL savvy operating system, is probably the only sensible way
to implement that kind of performance boost. Open-Gl (Glint and
other proprietary chips) hardware, will be available commodity priced
for just a few hundred bucks in the open consumer market in the
coming months.
<< That strategy, of special version software and hardware accelerator
bundles, failed miserably for Cubicomp (I-860), GSL/Topas (I-860),
and to a lesser extent, Digital Arts (T-800). >>
I used all 3 of those systems, and all 3 were very poor
implementations. They were not really worth the money for the little
bit of speedup. None of them used hardware assisted GUI functions,
which is the real issue here….not final rendering. This area is the
most signifigant difference between working on SGI & a PC host. That
was then, and this is now <g>. If a *very dedicated* developer such
as the YG really got involved with the design & operation of the
card, and tailored a version of the s/w to it, it could likely be one
he**-of-a system ! If it was one he**-of-a system, with AD's support,
it could sell. Of course, this is only my opinion <g>.
It's Dave from work. The guys at Creative Labs who are making
the GLINT chip sets for most of the board manufacturers said that
someone is writing an IPAS to interface the OPEN/GL conformance. 3DS
missed supporting it for release 4 so hopefully in r.5. Talk to you
later.